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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23221945">And What Else?</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/KLStarre/pseuds/KLStarre'>KLStarre</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Not Another D&amp;D Podcast (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:20:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>922</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23221945</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/KLStarre/pseuds/KLStarre</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>What does your anger feel like?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Moonshine Cybin &amp; Beverly Toegold V, Moonshine Cybin &amp; Hardwon Surefoot</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>97</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>And What Else?</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Spoilers all the way through!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“What does your anger feel like?” Moonshine asks Hardwon, after they leave Gemma’s body to be discovered by people who never loved her, and after he’s finally let himself cry, and after Bev has fallen into a fitful sleep. When he turns to her, she can see what his anger <em>looks</em> like, and it’s all clenched teeth and tensed muscles and veins standing out. But she’s learned that with Hardwon, what he looks like is rarely what he feels. And she doesn’t think he knows how to talk about it without prompting.</p><p>“Just angry,” he says, after a long enough pause that Moonshine thinks she’s maybe getting through to him. And then, in response to her raised eyebrow, “Like I’m trying to get something out of the rock and the pickaxe isn’t strong enough. There’s just something I can’t get through.”</p><p>Yeah. That makes sense. It breaks her heart that all he has is mining metaphors, but she gets it. The mines are in him as much as the Crick is in her. There’s something more, though; something he’s not saying. She can feel it through the Rapport Spores that had once only worked for an hour a day but were now engrained in all of them, constantly carrying information back and forth. It’s just a general feeling, not words – she doesn’t think he’s put it in words, yet.</p><p>“And what else?”</p><p>Hardwon looks away from her, and she’s afraid she’s pushed too far. He’s been through so much today. “I think it’s fear. I don’t – I don’t get scared.” This is a lie, Moonshine knows, but a harmless one. “But maybe that’s what my anger feels like.”</p><p>∞</p><p>“What does your anger feel like?” Moonshine asks Bev, after he screams at his father to go, and his father <em>does</em>. Moonshine doesn’t say anything about that, but it strikes her as strange that Bev Sr would listen, would abandon his son and his responsibility like that. Of course, the Crick abandoned Marabelle – the thought enters her mind, unbidden – and so maybe it’s not all that strange. She asks Bev the question not to press blame, anyway, but because she’s not sure the kid’s ever let himself feel anger before. And it’s important, she’s learned, since becoming a barbarian.</p><p>“What do you mean?” he asks, startled, but she knows him well enough to know he’s just stalling, and so she asks the same question again.</p><p>He’s quiet for a little bit too long, and it makes her sad. She and Hardwon shouldn’t have let him continue on with them. But what else was to be done? He wouldn’t have been any better off if they’d left him behind. He takes his helmet off and holds it under his arm, and his hair is flat and damp with sweat, his eyes a little bit wild.</p><p>“I think I don’t know yet,” he says, and she can tell he really, mostly believes that. But he also isn’t looking her in the eye, and he opens his mouth as if he has more to say before closing it again and shaking his head. So, she pushes.</p><p>“And what else?”</p><p>Hardwon is in the other corner of the dead queen’s tower, giving them space in a rare display of tact, and she watches him for a second while Bev thinks, so he doesn’t feel the pressure of her waiting.</p><p>“It feels like when Erlin and Egwene’s parents died and I couldn’t do anything about it. Like I’ve failed somehow even though there was nothing I could do. Is that right?”</p><p>“Oh, youngin’,” Moonshine whispers, and pulls him in close, tousling his hair.</p><p>∞</p><p><em>What does your anger feel like?</em> Moonshine asks herself as she flies into a rage, mushrooms growing from her skull and almost blocking her peripheral vision. She can barely think straight when she gets to this point in a battle, but it’s not true anger, not really. It’s defensive anger, the kind that protects and serves a purpose.</p><p>This kind of anger feels good, feels like red across her vision and a sharpening of focus and like turning the way she loves into something physical. She swings Rosaline down on the chains holding Gladeholm in place and grunts with the exertion of it, grins in response to the shattering. This anger feels like success, like helping people.</p><p>This anger is good.</p><p>Weeks later, after she’s visited Pendergreens in Hell and promised him that she will come and take the crown, she lies under the open sky on her own. Moonshine doesn’t often cry, but there’s no bundle of warmth pressed up against her, and the infinite vastness of the stars above feels too much like the infinite vastness of the years ahead, looming. So, she does cry, because she’s sad, but she’s also something else – <em>and what else?</em> she thinks, automatically – and she thinks maybe that something is the other kind of anger. The kind that’s selfish and stupid and not helpful. The kind that got Marabelle controlled by the devil and abandoned by the people who’d loved her. The kind that left Ilsed on the throne instead of going back to finish what had been started.</p><p>It’s not a kind of anger she should be feeling. So, she cries, because sadness is easier, and quieter.</p><p>Cobb finds her, says something about responsibility. She knows. She knows all about responsibility. She goes to the improv show and laughs about corn and lets the anger go.</p><p><em>(But what does it </em>feel <em>like?)</em></p><p>Moonshine doesn’t let herself answer.</p>
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